


smoke signals

by teatrolley



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, POV Mickey Milkovich, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23072215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatrolley/pseuds/teatrolley
Summary: They talk about Westpoint and they shoot the shit. Maybe they’re really speaking about something elseOR: Another s2-s3 fic
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 22
Kudos: 160





	smoke signals

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i am apparently in this fandom now. i was working on something else but then i read [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23005303/chapters/55004827?page=2&show_comments=true&view_full_work=false) and had a sudden urge to write about their first seasons so that's what you can thank for this
> 
> title is from the phoebe bridgers song. rated teen and up for the swearing. enjoy your reading!

The sun is going down over the bleachers as they arrive to the dugouts that day.

Mickey’s got a six-pack of beer in his hands and a small bottle of lube in his back pocket. He’s also still got that sated feeling of a post-fuck, delivered by the guy besides him in the freezer when Mickey picked him up. Before he went to juvie that would have been enough, but this time around the first fuck is just the start and never the end.

It’s hot as fuck this year, or maybe it’s just that Mickey didn’t really get to feel the spring. Not like this anyway, at night and on his own terms, putting the six-pack down and pulling out a cigarette as Ian jumps up to the bar to do a couple of pull-ups, both of their energies high on the summer night feel of the whole thing. Mickey smirks as he watches him.

“Impressive,” he says, in a voice that they both know is teasing. Besides, with how obvious Mickey’s allowed it to be that he really likes Ian’s newfound muscle and steadiness and ability to manhandle Mickey into position whenever he wants, it’s probably lost all chance of a bite. Ian just smiles, anyway.

“It might be paying off,” he says. “This and all the trigonometry.”

Mickey snorts at the last part.

“Really?” he says. “How’s that?”

“Lip has met a veteran guy through the college he’s being headhunted for. Will put in a good word for me.”

“College,” Mickey scoffs, easier to focus on than the rest. Ian nods as he jumps down, leaving the pull-up bar to come closer to Mickey instead.

“He’s a genius brain on legs,” he says. “Or something.”

“You sound displeased.”

Ian shrugs. Then he reaches out for the cigarette between Mickey’s lips too, and Mickey does what he always does, pulling away a little to hand it over himself. A small bit of distance, not that much of a difference except to his own stupid brain.

“He’s acting a little stupid these days. Karen and school and shit.” Mickey has heard about that, if not from Ian then from Mandy, who seems to be under the impression that Mickey gives a shit without really knowing anything about why he possibly would. “But it’s nice that he’ll help.”

“I still think it’s a dumbass idea, you know.”

Ian just smiles at that.

“Well, you and Lip both,” he says.

“But Lip is helping you?”

“So did you, the other day. With math.”

“Because you were driving me nuts talking about it,” Mickey says, ignoring the way that Ian smiles like he sees right through it. “You gonna smoke my whole cigarette?”

Ian hands it back and he takes it, taking a drag as Ian finds one of the beers and opens it the regular way, downing about half before he hands that over to Mickey too. He always looks amused and he never looks very convinced and Mickey should care more about how bad a liar he apparently is, but while it’s only Ian who knows it, it doesn’t actually feel like that big of a deal. Maybe it’s okay that Ian can see through him a little bit.

When Mickey has drunk the beer, he goes to the pull-up bar too. Mostly it’s to see that look in Ian’s eyes as he watches him, lingering on his arms like Ian runs hot just at the look of him too. Maybe this is how they flirt, Mickey thinks, when flirting doesn’t feel like a too pussy move.

“Impressive,” Ian copies from before, and Mickey jumps down to the ground to flip him off. Ian just smiles as Mickey comes closer to him again, but he doesn’t touch him. Instead he opens another beer.

“You know that with your discipline, you could do something other than the army quite well, right?” Mickey says, despite himself. He should probably pretend not to care, but while Ian’s muscles are hot and the uniform is too, the thought of him running off to some stupid country to get killed for a country that doesn’t care about them seems stupid to the n’th degree. But Ian’s so _stubborn_.

“Something else that will get me money and purpose and out of here?” he asks.

“You too good for Southside too?”

“I don’t know,” Ian says. “I think Lip would be fucking stupid not to try to get out.”

“So it’s better to lose a leg?”

“I’m skilled, Mick,” Ian says, tone exasperated like Mickey’s just being petulant. “I’ll stay safe.”

“You can’t really guarantee that shit.”

“Well, it’s good to know that you care.”

“Fuck off,” Mickey says, and knew that Ian said it just to make him shut up. They know each other too well, but it doesn’t really get them anywhere. It doesn’t make much of a difference that Mickey knows Ian wants more if he’s not going to give it to him anyway. And it doesn’t make much of a difference that Ian knows that Mickey actually does give a shit if Mickey can’t ever come out anyway, not even for him. Instead they spend their days talking about things without really saying them.

“You coming to work tomorrow?” Ian says then, obviously changing the topic.

“Yeah, man,” Mickey says, letting the change happen. “Can’t miss a day, you know that. Gotta keep the PO happy at all times.”

“It was boring without you today.”

“Oh, yeah? And what am I? Just there to entertain you?”

“Not according to Linda, but it is entertaining, don’t you think?”

He has this stupid proud smirk whenever he makes a joke, especially if it’s about the two of them, and he wears it now, wide and big. Mickey gives him a look, but he can’t quite smother the smile that comes along with it, and he knows that even if he did, Ian would know it was there in hiding anyway.

“We ever gonna get to that, anyway?” he asks, dropping his eyes down to Ian’s pants and smirking when Ian does the same.

“So impatient,” Ian says, but he leans away from the fence and pushes at Mickey firmly enough to turn him halfway around, the way that Mickey loves. “It was boring without this too.”

“That, I can imagine.”

“Had to jerk off on my own.”

“ _Had_ to?”

“That door locks and I’m hard,” he says, so kind of annoyed that Mickey laughs, real and almost too truthful but happy too. Ian’s arms sneak around him, down towards his belt. “Pavlovian response, I guess.”

But Mickey’s not listening anymore. Not when Ian’s hands are touching him like this.

“Get going then, Army,” he says. Thankfully that’s not the kind of thing he has to say twice.

*

That summer is crazy for them. Ian has summer school, but he’ll come to work in the mornings before they open to fuck Mickey dry, and he’ll do it all over again in the afternoon. He’ll train too and he keeps buffing up and at night they go out together to the dugouts to hang out. But Mickey's not the only thing that Ian’s got going on.

Apparently he’s fighting with Lip. Mickey hears it from Mandy but that’s several days after he’s heard it from Ian himself, when he went to pick Ian up at closing time and found him quietly fuming with a beer by his side. Something about the officer wanting Lip instead and Lip smashing a watermelon on the floor. What the fuck, Mickey thinks, but okay. Gallaghers generally try to avoid punching each in the face.

“He always gets whatever he wants,” Ian says though, sweeping the floor of the store to close it up while Mickey sits on the counter, decidedly unfucked. But whatever. Ian needs to talk. “You know he wants to drop out of school? For a baby that might not even be his.”

“If you’re trying to say that he’s stupid, then I won’t argue with you.”

“He doesn’t even have a plan. Says he wants to earn money instead of studying. Well, excuse me, but what does he think I’ve been doing for the last two years?”

“I’ve always thought he was a pussy.” Ian looks at him, at first a little exasperated but then a little amused. Mickey goes on just to make him smile. “Thinks he’s all hot-shot and shit. You know they wouldn’t take him if they really knew him, right? You can’t fare in the army when your head’s too big.”

It works. Ian chuckles.

“And I’m better?” he asks.

“I already told you you’re disciplined.”

“And what about my ego?”

But he’s asking it all happy, like Mickey saying anything at all is Mickey giving in.

“Too big when you’re wearing that stupid smirk, that’s for sure.”

But he grins like he sees through it.

“That was almost nice, Mick.”

“Fuck you. You think I’m not nice to you?” Mickey asks, despite himself. At least he’s made Ian stop sweeping and start to come over towards him instead.

“I don’t think anything,” he says, but he’s so pleased. “No thoughts.”

“Alright. Fuck you, Gallagher.”

“You already said that,” Ian says. But he’s smiling and touching Mickey’s knee and he’s so fucking happy that maybe it’s okay. So he smiles.

“What you gonna do about it?”

Ian unhooks his belt.

*

Then Mickey’s in juvie again.

This time he doesn’t really expect Ian to ever come. It’s not like they ended on anything resembling a good note, although he expects that Ian took everything he said for the bullshit they both know it was. Then again he looked so young and fucking upset and the image of that has started to repeat in Mickey’s mind.

He knows he’s losing the fight. That it’s been a long time since he was the one in control, if any of them are. That Ian has never been just sex, because just sex doesn’t keep you up at night with worry about the expressions on your own face and just sex doesn’t sometimes convince you that maybe you don’t have to worry; that maybe there’s hope instead. Just sex is not a teenage boy, stubborn and angry and sweet, who shows up on one of Mickey’s visitor’s days anyway.

“I almost enlisted,” he says. First thing.

“What?”

“I got a bad math grade. I guess I did actually rely on your tutoring.”

Mickey just looks at him. He’s angry, Mickey can tell, maybe at him and maybe at the world. He heard from Mandy that Monica came back. And then he heard from Mandy that she tried to slit her wrists. Didn't try, just did it, but didn't manage to kill herself.

“You’re too young,” he says in the end.

“Yeah, they didn’t take me. Monica yelled up a storm about it, of course.”

“She was with you?”

“What else?” Ian says. “You think there’s anyone else in the world who could so easily convince me to let go of my goals?”

Maybe he’s not really angry. Maybe he’s just really fucking sad.

“Are you okay?” Mickey asks. Because he knows all the parts of it that Ian aren’t saying. He was there the last time Monica came back. Hell, he was the one that Ian decided to run to, and maybe he still is. Maybe that’s this.

Ian’s face contorts in a horrible way.

“Oh yeah, I’m fucking great,” he says, and he’s hurt too, probably. If Mickey’s finally honest, he’s long past the point of being able to pretend that that doesn’t put everything to a halt. That hurting Ian or losing him isn’t the only thing that really matters to him. “You know you don’t fool me, right? You didn’t and you still don’t.”

And what does he say to that? Other than _I’m sorry_ , which he can’t really say? Other than _I know_?

“You still need help with math?” he says instead. For a moment Ian still looks pissed off, but then it works. Releases some tension from him.

“No,” he says, but in his normal voice now. Less angry and more bright. “I’m friends with Lip again. And I’m fucking an older guy who’s helping me too.”

“Oh.” Mickey tries not to let the jealousy shine through it, as Ian is looking at him all challenging as if to see what he will do. “Another fucking pervert?”

“You’re hopeless, Mickey.”

“Fuck you.”

But they’ve reached a standstill and now they’re almost smiling at each other. So whatever, he knows that he’s revealed himself enough for Ian to be happy again, asshole enough to enjoy knowing that Mickey doesn’t really stand a chance against him. That Mickey’s probably been hopeless since the start.

“Is it just as shitty as last time?” Ian asks him through the equilibrium.

“Well, jello-stealing Mick isn’t here anymore, so…”

Ian chuckles, a nice sound. But then he grows quiet again.

“I wanted to see you when it happened,” he says. “Monica.”

He doesn’t have to explain more for Mickey to know what it means. And Mickey probably doesn’t have to do more than smile for Ian to know what it means to him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he says. Ian shrugs, and they both look up as the guard telling them they’ve got one minute left.

“I’ll come by next week, okay? Don’t tell me no if you don’t mean it.”

“Okay,” Mickey says instead. Just to see him smile.

*

After he comes out of juvie again, it’s different.

Ian’s been coming by on the regular to talk to him, and he did last time as well, but there’s less pretense this time around. If Mickey could look him in the face and tell him he didn’t mean anything to him, and Ian could look back a couple of weeks later and say he didn’t buy it all, then the only way to go from here is together or apart. And even though maybe Mickey should be turning away, he picks the school bleachers as the first place to go when he gets out.

Not that Ian’s waited for him at all, which he guesses he didn’t really expect but which still bothers the fuck out of him. Ian just finds him amusing though, which should honestly piss Mickey off too when he’s making it obvious that he could kick anyone’s ass and the stupid ginger just decides that it’s funny. But whatever. He grins and he fucks Mickey good and afterwards they sit together and share a smoke.

“You’re really doing this army shit, huh?” Mickey says, nudging Ian’s pant-clad knee with his own. Ian smiles.

“Not this conversation again,” he says, and Mickey smiles too.

“Whatever,” he says. “I guess the uniform is kind of hot even if it’s all a way for the government to murder poor kids.”

“You’re really anti-military.”

“They don’t do me any good, man. Neither do the pigs.”

He takes another drag as Ian just watches him, painfully amused. When Mickey said that he’d missed him he’d reacted with such joy, and even if Mickey reeled it back quickly, he can’t quite stop thinking about it. He used to think that Ian was too easy to impress, accepting scraps like they’re big things, but now he knows that Ian also knows to stand his ground. That’s good, because at least that means he does that with the perverts too, who Mickey still hate with a fucking vengeance. But it probably also means that Mickey won’t get away with the fucking around so easy this time around.

“What are you doing tonight, anyway?” he asks, because it’s warm out and he remembers last summer so clearly. Because he hopes to do some of it again.

“Hopefully you,” Ian says. Mickey scoffs, but he’s happy.

“You think Linda will take me back?”

“Yeah, I asked.”

“You did?”

“Mm-hm.”

Like it’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s not. Mickey hums anyway, hands the cigarette over in thanks, doesn’t really say it loud. Ian probably still know what he’s saying though, even if he isn’t saying it.

“Hey,” Ian says, then, when he hands the cigarette back. “If I need a place to set up a training course, are you the right person to ask?”

“What are you looking for?” Mickey asks.

“Somewhere I can get some tires and stuff, build some obstacles and that kind of shit. Where it won’t be bothered when I’m not there.”

“I think I know a place,” he says. There are those two buildings anyway, abandoned and mostly left alone, where he’s gone a couple of times when he’s needed to leave the house after Terry has come home in a drunken stupor and decided that Mickey looks so clean-shaven he probably deserves a fag-bash or some other shit, not knowing how true it really is.

“Will you help me set it up?”

“Just out, and he’s already enlisting me,” Mickey says, but he likes the thought of being asked. Likes that even though Ian was fucking someone when Mickey came here earlier and Ian’s been fucking someone else on the regular while Mickey’s been in the joint, Mickey is still the one who he asks for this stuff. Who he wants to spend his days with, the way he did when he was a scrawny bright-haired kid with an obvious, stupid crush.

“Is that a yes?” Ian says, although he probably already knows.

“You’re a nuisance, Gallagher.”

“Tomorrow, okay? And if you come by the store at nine I’ll have talked to Linda.”

“Oh, you will? So it’s all like last summer then?”

Ian looks at his lips.

“Or not,” he says, looking straight into Mickey’s eyes. Or not.

*

A couple of days later he does help Ian set up the obstacle course and then they’re sitting side by side, each in a tire, sharing a smoke. It’s after he’s tried not to seethe with jealousy and has failed anyway, ending in him beating Ned up which Ian seemed as unimpressed and unperturbed by as he always fucking is. After Ian has looked straight into his face a little earlier and, finally maybe, told Mickey that he just wants to be kissed.

It was kind of hard to come back from that, but Ian at least has mercy, so eventually he lit the cigarette that ended them up here. Mickey’s been watching him all day, training and running around, and if he wasn’t busy panicking he’d probably be itching pretty unbearably to be fucked by him by now. Instead he inhales the smoke and looks at the flame as he exhales it again.

“How are your grades, anyway?” he asks. The setting of everything means Ian will know what he’s asking.

“Pretty good. I might actually do it, you know?”

“Oh yeah?” Mickey says. He tries not to let that be a cause of panic too, but the thing about Ian is that he makes a lot of these things not up to him. “And what then?”

“Well, Westpoint then.”

But that’s not what he meant. For once in his whole life he looks at Ian and wills his eyes to reveal what he’s really thinking; stuff about a piece of shit stuck on the Southside and an army boy and where they could go. Maybe they do. Ian smiles when he sees them anyway, and kicks Mickey’s knee with his shoe, halfway gentle to him.

“I don’t know what then,” he says. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On what happens,” he says. All smug and pleased.

“Ah-ha? Fuck you.”

But he doesn’t really mean it, and Ian laughs. Of course Mickey’s going to kiss him. They probably both knew it before he got out, and they’ve definitely known it these last couple of days or these last couple of weeks. Since Mickey went to see him first, and Mickey beat those guys up, and Mickey came back to work with him. Since Mickey helped him set this up, and maybe even since Mickey first told him he wouldn’t, almost two years ago. Since he let Ian run to him when Monica came back, and since it became obvious that he’s always given a shit. That if Ian asks for something, then Mickey will give it to him.

Ian’s still smiling, but now it looks settled in.

“You can do whatever you want, you know.”

“Can I?” he asks.

“Mm-hm.” He nods. “Give me your hand for a second, though.”

Mickey doesn’t ask for what, but Ian probably wouldn’t have answered anyway. When Mickey gives it to him, he takes it anyway, places it on jean-clad crutch, hard beneath the zipper. Mickey smirks at the boldness, at the heat, at the joy of it. At Ian, who holds his hand there and leans back against the tire like it feels good.

“Whatever you want,” he says. Like he already knows that Mickey is his. So maybe Mickey decides to show him right then and there that a mouth can do way more than kiss.

*

But in the end, he gives in.

Not because he’s been pestered to do it, or not _just_ because of that. Not just because he’s nervous that Ian will go to Westpoint and forget about him, or that Ian will one day decide that those old fucks with their money and shit are worth going steady for. That Ian will say fuck it, if he’s never gonna kiss me I’m over it. Not just that, although that too. But also because he wants it.

He’s always scared. He is, although he pretends to be tough, but he knows that Ian knows that. Enough to keep coming back anyway. To wait while Mickey figures his shit out and moves towards him. To push him, just a little bit, maybe not away from the fear but at least towards the other bits. Hope, maybe. Happiness.

It gets his ass shot, and that fucking sucks, but it also gets him Ian worrying about him on the whole car-ride back home, so maybe it’s okay. Except for the social worker, of course, whose presence means that Mickey is quickly thrown out and that he gets to trip around in the back of the store the next day, there before his shift starts, waiting for Ian to come around and open the fucking shop.

When he finally does he’s ten minutes late, and Mickey almost wants to slap him in the face.

“What happened?” he asks, pretending he can’t hear the frustrated worry in his own stupid voice. Ian grimaces but at least he looks alright.

“I guess you’re looking at a foster kid now,” he says.

“Shit, Ian.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You okay?”

Ian shrugs. It’s not the first time Mickey’s asked him that question, but it’s still rare enough that it’s part of the list of things that makes Ian a little pleased.

“It’s alright,” he says. “Got put in a fucking boy’s home though, not even with a family, although at least I’m still together with Lip. If I wanted some early army school training, then I guess this is it.”

“You don’t sound so pleased?”

“It fucking sucks,” Ian says, finally unlocking the stupid door to the store so the both of them can head inside. That seems to return him to some sort of normality, because it makes him look around and then at Mickey. Eyes, then down. “How’s your ass, anyway?”

Mickey snorts.

“Been better. Fucking thanks for that.”

Ian grins.

“I’m sorry. Can I see?”

“Out here, in the open, in bright fucking daylight? I think we’d scare the kids.”

“In the freezer, asshole,” Ian says.

“Later. Just look when we’re there anyway.”

That makes him smirk, all happy, and Mickey remembers the fact that he kissed him yesterday. That’s a lie of course, he never fucking forgot, but he’s reminded anyway. Ian probably is too. At least he looks at his lips, and Mickey has to look down to not just lean in.

“Anyway, it’s not so promising, is it?” he says then.

“What?”

“You, as an officer. Somehow you always seem to be the reason I get shot.”

Ian laughs at that, warm and bright as it normally is. And then he shakes his head.

"Pretty sure that's just you, Mick," he says. "Playing tough shit."

"Is that so?"

"Mm."

But Mickey knows that it's part of his traits that Ian really likes. That Ian's constant amusement is a kind of fondness too, which is served to him on a platter, ready to be taken. Which has been there, right in the center of it all, since the moment they first fucked. 

"And yet," Mickey says. "You're the punk who wants me to be your boyfriend."

"Mm-hm."

They look at each other, smiling. And then, that night, they finally fucking kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> let's ignore what happens after this and focus on how delightful the two of them as teens just playing emotional catch really is. it really makes me emo sometimes
> 
> also if you liked this, please shoot me a comment and tell me why! the best thing about all of this is to hear from y'all
> 
> also follow my [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com)


End file.
